| Summary: | <p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p><it>Pseudomonas syringae </it>is a widespread bacterial pathogen that causes disease on a broad range of economically important plant species. Pathogenicity of <it>P. syringae </it>strains is dependent on the type III secretion system, which secretes a suite of up to about thirty virulence 'effector' proteins into the host cytoplasm where they subvert the eukaryotic cell physiology and disrupt host defences. <it>P. syringae </it>pathovar <it>tabaci </it>naturally causes disease on wild tobacco, the model member of the Solanaceae, a family that includes many crop species as well as on soybean.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We used the 'next-generation' Illumina sequencing platform and the Velvet short-read assembly program to generate a 145X deep 6,077,921 nucleotide draft genome sequence for <it>P. syringae </it>pathovar <it>tabaci </it>strain 11528. From our draft assembly, we predicted 5,300 potential genes encoding proteins of at least 100 amino acids long, of which 303 (5.72%) had no significant sequence similarity to those encoded by the three previously fully sequenced <it>P. syringae </it>genomes. Of the core set of Hrp Outer Proteins that are conserved in three previously fully sequenced <it>P. syringae </it>strains, most were also conserved in strain 11528, including AvrE1, HopAH2, HopAJ2, HopAK1, HopAN1, HopI, HopJ1, HopX1, HrpK1 and HrpW1. However, the <it>hrpZ1 </it>gene is partially deleted and <it>hopAF1 </it>is completely absent in 11528. The draft genome of strain 11528 also encodes close homologues of HopO1, HopT1, HopAH1, HopR1, HopV1, HopAG1, HopAS1, HopAE1, HopAR1, HopF1, and HopW1 and a degenerate HopM1'. Using a functional screen, we confirmed that <it>hopO1, hopT1, hopAH1</it>, <it>hopM1'</it>, <it>hopAE1</it>, <it>hopAR1</it>, and <it>hopAI1' </it>are part of the virulence-associated HrpL regulon, though the <it>hopAI1' </it>and <it>hopM1' </it>sequences were degenerate with premature stop codons. We also discovered two additional HrpL-regulated effector candidates and an HrpL-regulated distant homologue of <it>avrPto1</it>.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The draft genome sequence facilitates the continued development of <it>P. syringae </it>pathovar <it>tabaci </it>on wild tobacco as an attractive model system for studying bacterial disease on plants. The catalogue of effectors sheds further light on the evolution of pathogenicity and host-specificity as well as providing a set of molecular tools for the study of plant defence mechanisms. We also discovered several large genomic regions in <it>Pta </it>11528 that do not share detectable nucleotide sequence similarity with previously sequenced <it>Pseudomonas </it>genomes. These regions may include horizontally acquired islands that possibly contribute to pathogenicity or epiphytic fitness of <it>Pta </it>11528.</p>
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